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George Kateb A Life of Fear W E ARE CAUGHT UP IN A COURSE OF EVENTS THAT ARE NEARLY AS opaque in motivation as they are dramatic and often tragic in their effects. The United States answered jihad by carrying the war on terror to Afghanistan, but then seemed to veer by invading and occupying Iraq. We cannot say now how the sequence will develop. The situa­ tion must change; it may change rapidly or seem to, and then change again. Hunches about the future may be possible, but not predictions. Though predictions are not possible, analysis is necessary, even if it can only be strained and provisional. When motives are opaque, analy­ sis becomes more difficult than usual, barely possible. In the present situation, motives are often opaque and become more opaque when principal actors take pains to hide them and also try to obscure the obvious (helped by the establishment press) and to distract attention (helped by the mass media). Nonetheless, we have to try to understand our situation, despite the obstacles. Serge Schmemann says that contemporary history is the hard­ est to write and the easiest to criticize (2004). We are thus cautioned that those who analyze the present are prone to make serious mistakes. There will always be some opacity in human affairs; our understand­ ing can go only so far. Principal actors themselves often cannot give a full account of their motives, even to themselves, even if they want to. Whenever several policy motives are in play, their ranking in impor­ tance will differ from one principal to another; even in the mind of one principal, the ranking may shift from time to time. It is often impos­ sible to find a stable deepest level in many of the principals. Outside observers are reduced to piecing things together faultily. To appropriate social research Voi 71 : No 4 : W inter 200 4 887 Emerson’s words about human beings in “Circles”: “there is a residuum unknown, unanalysable” (1983 [1841]: 406). We are told that there is much to fear, but the warnings, though frequent, are often vague. Of course the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, by Muslim terrorists or jihadists is an event so clear and direct that it seems to need no analysis. When effects are truly dramatic, the concern on the part of the attacked party to comprehend the causes tends to evaporate or is thought frivolous or absurd, perhaps indecent. Only effects occupy the full attention, as if there were no significant prior events linked to the dramatic deeds. Officials set out to combat the effects—above all, to inflict retaliation for the sake of retaliation but also to neutralize the attackers. However, we must not let the drama and the tragedy of September 11 disable analysis. For a start, we can entertain the thought that the destruction of the World Trade Center was intended by some of its participants and understood by many of its sympathizers as an act of revenge—a venge­ ful strike—against what is perceived by many Arabs and Muslims as a constellation of Western imperialism, Israeli colonialism, and Arab and Muslim subservience. All the elements preceded Bush’s presidency, but he has made them a good deal worse. From the perspective of Arabs and Muslims, the Bush administration’s almost total acquiescence in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s policies (starting in spring 2001) was a definitive decision that served to steel the resolve to produce a dramatic act of vengeance. The constellation of elements arouses in the already inflamed religious or ethnic imagination of the Arab and Muslim world a dread of the West’s tyrannical intentions and a hatred of its tyrannical deeds—dread and hatred just like those felt by Western peoples throughout their histoiy. The recently revealed American policy of torture of combatants captured in Afghanistan and Iraq is simply the most dreadful expres­ sion of tyranny—not in scale but in planned intensity of degradation. The pursuit of usable intelligence was not the source of the policy. How could it be? The specific deeds o f those tortured were rarely known; 888 social research those who were...

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